Germany to borrow more on capital markets in 2018

Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government plans to borrow more money on capital markets in 2018 than this year because it will have to pay back more old debt than it repaid in 2017, the Finance Ministry’s debt agency said on Tuesday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government intends to keep the federal budget balanced for the fifth year running in 2018, meaning no net new borrowing will be required.

Still, Berlin needs to tap capital markets because it cannot fully pay back old loans out of incoming revenues.

Excluding inflation-linked debt, the agency plans to issue 183 billion euros of debt in 2018, the Finance Agency said in a statement. This would be 6.5 billion euros more than this year’s issuance volume.

The debt agency said it planned to issue 147 billion euros in longer-term nominal capital market instruments and 36 billion euros in money market instruments. It added it would also issue between 6 and 10 billion euros in inflation-linked securities.

“The federal government will need to borrow more next year because it has to pay back more old debt to creditors than this year,” a spokeswoman for the Finance Agency said.